


messy, but vibrant.

by sncwbaz



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, The fluffiest fluff, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 14:32:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19297693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sncwbaz/pseuds/sncwbaz
Summary: Just some real soft snowbaz. Simon got into painting to calm his restlessness and ends up painting on Baz. That's the whole fic. Just short and sweet for anyone who needs some soft snowbaz in their lives.





	messy, but vibrant.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written very spontaneously and without beta reader so yeet. My friend just wanted some soft snowbaz, so how could I not quickly write her some??

There has always been a certain amount of restlessness to Simon. There was always some part of him that had to be in motion. There was always a nervous energy that radiated off of him as he went through his days.

It was something I had grown very used to, after having been his roommate for almost eight years. And to be honest, I had assumed Bunce would have grown a tolerance for it, too, after all this time of being his best friend. Turns out, she hadn’t. Not, at least, when this nervous energy followed her constantly around the flat, now the two of them lived together.

“I can’t help it!” Simon defended himself when Bunce complained about it for the hundredth time. His leg had been bouncing up and down under the table as the three of us were eating dinner, causing the kitchen table to wobble slightly.

“Isn’t there something you can focus your energy into so it won’t jump out at any inconvenient moment?” Penny asked, exasperated.

I snorted at that. When Bunce put it like that, Simon’s restlessness reminded me a lot of his magic, when he’d still had his magic. His magic, too, was something he’d had very little control over. I thought it was nice that there was still a part of that left in him, maybe not as actual magic, but as the rattling tension that was so strongly associated with his magic. I saw no reason to reel that energy in.

Bunce, though, thought different. And so, apparently, did Simon’s therapist. They made a list of things for him to try, that would help him calm this nervous tension in his body. There were things on the list such as meditating, doing yoga, and going on long walks. None of these really worked. Snow sucked at both meditating and yoga, and long walks simply did nothing for him.

Finally, Simon ended up trying painting. I guess that the combination of needing to focus and relax at the same time, is what did it for him. Painting is kind of similar to magic in that way.

Simon wasn’t necessarily a great painter. He didn’t have much of an eye for detail, but he loved playing with colours. Most of his paintings just consisted of blending one colour into another.

This is how he came to ask me if he could paint on me. To which I responded with a raised eyebrow.

“What? I thought it would be nice. Remember when–you know when we tried to give you some of my magic, back in our room at Watford? You conjured the night sky around us. I want to paint that on your arms. I want to try.”

If I had fed right before he asked me, I most likely would have blushed at his request, but I hadn’t fed, so I could simply grin and say, “That seems cheesy, Snow.”

Simon huffed at that.

I held out my arms in front of me. “Sure, you can try.”

Simon sat me down at the kitchen table, with my arms splayed out in front of me, the palms of my hands facing up. I had to hold back a squeal when he started to coat my forearms in black paint. The paint was cold against my already cold skin, and the paintbrush tickled in a not entirely unpleasant way. Quickly, I relaxed into the soothing motions that the paintbrush made on my skin. I wondered if this was that same feeling that succeeded in soothing Simon’s nervous energy when he painted.

Simon was focussing closely on adding a purplish glow in the black sky he had painted on my arms. I watched the slight furrow of his brow, and I had to bite down a smile as I noticed how his tongue was sticking out of his mouth ever so slightly.

After adding the purple glow to the dark sky, Simon started to add tiny white dots to resemble stars. I simply kept on watching his face, until I couldn’t hold myself back anymore from leaning in to plant a soft kiss right above his brow.

“Don’t move, I’ll mess up,” Simon said, almost absentmindedly.

I leaned back in my chair, and waited patiently for Simon to finish his work.

When Simon was done, he looked up at me with a faint smile on his face. “That was nice,” he said.

I simply nodded. The painting he had made on my arms didn’t really look much like our star filled dorm room had, but it was nice anyway. It was very Simon in its messiness, yet vibrantness.

“Now I can’t wash my hands–or arms anymore. Or do anything with them, really.”

Simon looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Well that’s too bad for you, then.”

He picked up his paintbrush again and leaned in close. He put his paintbrush to my face and started to make short strokes with it. I laughed, and tilted my head backwards. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t move, you’ll make me fuck up,” Simon said.

I tried to move out of his reach, but Simon was practically in my lap by now.

I ended up snatching the paintbrush out of his hand, and returned the favour by attacking his face with messy paint strokes.

“Don’t!” Simon yelped, and he quickly moved out of my reach. I made a start to follow him, but he quickly warned me, “If you move too much you’ll smudge the paint on your arms!” That stopped me.

Simon moved closer to me again, grinning. “Can I please have the paintbrush back?”

Defeated, though slightly amused, I returned the paintbrush to him. And so I ended up sat at the kitchen table for another full hour as Simon covered more and more of me in paint.


End file.
